A new licensing program to support the news industry • Hacker News Board

Re: A new licensing program to support the news industry

#21

Post by alkonaut » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 10:46 AM UTC

If google actually creates a good system for paying news media through e.g. microtransactions or group subscriptions which is ONLY there to improve the internet and doesn't benefit google (Get more traffic, get more user data, ...) then this is a good thing. It would be like the google/apple teaming up on the BT proximity tracking apis in android and iOS.

If google gets any cut in such a system, or even gets a slight benefit, or even knows who has what subscriptions and uses that information - then I'm completely against it. But if they spend their own money developing platforms that they then have no control over and no benefit from - good! Otherwise - bad!

Re: A new licensing program to support the news industry

#22

Post by tomgp » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 10:47 AM UTC

wbl wrote: post #20

quantummkv wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actions like these start making a lot of sense if you start viewing Google and their friends as a bunch of hi-tech mafioso. Newspapers are essentially forced to pay protection money and then publicly kiss the ring, declare their allegiance and pray that the deal is not altered further.

Google doesn't compete with papers but link papers to readers.

News papers business is selling ads, that’s Google’s Business too. Google has an advantage over individual publications in that it can track user behaviour across multiple sites. So news outlets have made deals with google to act as brokers for their ad space giving google more power and the ability to effectively set ad prices. Google regularly throws news organisations pitiful sums of ‘innovation’ money for PR purposes whilst creaming multiple times that amount off their revenue streams. It’s going to take a brave publication to question the value of Google’s algorithm and bring ad sales in-house but I think that’s the only way out of this situation.

Re: A new licensing program to support the news industry

#23

Post by bregma » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 10:50 AM UTC

At first I thought this was about some central licensing body regulating and awarding credentials to journalists, just like is done in professional endeavours like medicine, engineering, and law. I was internally debating the merits vs. the dangers (self-regulated or government controlled? Do we want official state-approved press?).

Then I realized that it was purely about a distributor musing about paying content providers in the hopes they can influence it, at least ostensibly for "quality".

I see nothing wrong with the idea. Money is our way of measuring value, and information certainly has value and Google has been making mint extracting the excess value from information for a long time, to the point that little actually leaks through to the end consumer.

I thinks this move would increase the quality of news, but the consumer needs to understand that the product they are consuming is influenced by the media through which they consume it. Whoever pays the piper calls the tune, as they say.

Re: A new licensing program to support the news industry

#24

Post by searchableguy » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 11:04 AM UTC

ngold wrote: post #17

No one forced all news organizations to dump their in house advertising for easily ad blocked versions. They all had perfectly good reasons to not have to deal with the headache of losing money. But that would require keeping the ad sales team they had on board and making a similiar product online. But everyone got scared and lazy and saw a one quarter jump by dumping a bunch of staff.

There is already a web monetization api in the work - https://webmonetization.org/

Re: A new licensing program to support the news industry

#25

Post by nness » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 11:06 AM UTC

searchableguy wrote: post #24

ngold wrote: post #17

No one forced all news organizations to dump their in house advertising for easily ad blocked versions. They all had perfectly good reasons to not have to deal with the headache of losing money. But that would require keeping the ad sales team they had on board and making a similiar product online. But everyone got scared and lazy and saw a one quarter jump by dumping a bunch of staff.

There is already a web monetization api in the work - https://webmonetization.org/

Reminds me of the ill-fated "Beanz" of 2001...

Re: A new licensing program to support the news industry

#26

Post by tannhaeuser » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 11:10 AM UTC

wbl wrote: post #20

quantummkv wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actions like these start making a lot of sense if you start viewing Google and their friends as a bunch of hi-tech mafioso. Newspapers are essentially forced to pay protection money and then publicly kiss the ring, declare their allegiance and pray that the deal is not altered further.

Google doesn't compete with papers but link papers to readers.

GOOG, FB, and AMZN extract all value out of the web, the music industry, retail, IT/cloud, soon e-learning, and basically everything, with content creators getting nothing. In music, we've already seen the effect of no monetary feedback for too many years now; save for very few counterexamples, we haven't seen any innovation since the 1990's; instead we have raised a generation of YouTube addicts. That is the problem to solve sooner rather than later; it doesn't matter how and why we got here, and it's not a question of whether Google or someone else did anything wrong. It's about how we can go on in a civil society with large public investments into eg IP networking, law enforcement, etc. to only line the pockets of very very few.

Re: A new licensing program to support the news industry

#27

Post by gmac » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 11:14 AM UTC

doublesCs wrote: post #11

Just to get a sense for the crowd: am I the only one who doesn't care much about the news industry? Keeping with what's new in society is important insofar as having an informed population is vital for the correct functioning of a democracy. But the "news industry" is 95% gargabe and contributes zero to getting people informed. I firmly believe that if the news industry disappeared tomorrow, we wouldn't be much worse…

> Keeping with what's new in society is important insofar as having an informed population is vital for the correct functioning of a democracy.

I would say this -- the correct functioning of democracy -- is among the most important things there are.

So we surely need journalism ('the news industry') to improve, not just go away.

Re: A new licensing program to support the news industry

#28

Post by searchableguy » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 11:18 AM UTC

mtgx wrote: post #4

I know this is still a very rough idea, but I truly believe the future of content monetization is having some kind of decentralized or even federated payment system and digital wallet that's provider-agnostic and allows people to do "micro-donations", whether it's through upvotes, claps, time spent on the page, or a combination of all of those and more. If this depends on Google, or Paypal, or Apple, and you can only…

https://webmonetization.org/

Re: A new licensing program to support the news industry

#29

Post by Jon_Lowtek » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 11:18 AM UTC

syshum wrote: post #16

doublesCs wrote: post #11

Just to get a sense for the crowd: am I the only one who doesn't care much about the news industry? Keeping with what's new in society is important insofar as having an informed population is vital for the correct functioning of a democracy. But the "news industry" is 95% gargabe and contributes zero to getting people informed. I firmly believe that if the news industry disappeared tomorrow, we wouldn't be much worse…

I care about NEWS, factual reporting on current event We no longer have a news industry, we have a propaganda industry filled with political commenters and activists not journalists (that is both left and right)

facts don't matter, stories sell

Re: A new licensing program to support the news industry

#30

Post by SyneRyder » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 11:23 AM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #21

If google actually creates a good system for paying news media through e.g. microtransactions or group subscriptions which is ONLY there to improve the internet and doesn't benefit google (Get more traffic, get more user data, ...) then this is a good thing. It would be like the google/apple teaming up on the BT proximity tracking apis in android and iOS. If google gets any cut in such a system, or even gets a slight…

> If google actually creates a good system for paying news media through e.g. microtransactions...

They had something close to this with Google Contributor:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor

You add a few dollars to your online account, nominate which participating sites you want it to work with, and you would get an ad-free / paywall-free experience on those sites. The sites would determine the price per page - some only charged 1c, while some smaller blogs charged 5c. Some large Australian newspapers signed up, and apparently Mashable and The Onion were part of it at launch.

Ultimately every website I followed pulled out of the program. It seems that advertising revenue earns more for newspapers than anyone is prepared to pay for news. I never even used up the $5 I put into my Google Contributor account.